Posted on 06/23/2026 11:29:07 AM PDT by DFG
When Canada legalized medical assistance in dying (MAID) in 2016, the public debate focused largely on one situation: people facing the end of life and suffering intolerably.
For many Canadians, that remains their understanding of the law today.
But Canada’s MAID framework has evolved significantly since then. In 2021, Parliament expanded the law through Bill C-7, creating two pathways for assisted death. The first pathway applies to people whose natural death is imminent and expected soon (reasonably foreseeable).
The second — known as “Track 2” — allows separate access to MAID for individuals with disabilities who are not dying.
This expansion fundamentally changed the scope of assisted dying in Canada.
Track 2 means that assisted suicide may be available to people living with disabilities even when they are not nearing the end of life. Thousands of Canadians have already accessed MAID through this pathway. Between 2021 and 2024, a total of 2,050 people died from Track 2 MAID.
This shift raises profound questions about how Canada responds to suffering.
People with disabilities and disability organizations across the country have warned that Track 2 creates serious risks. Many individuals seeking MAID have described suffering related not to medical conditions alone but to poverty, housing insecurity, social isolation or lack of disability supports.
These are not medical failures. They are social failures.
For people with intellectual disabilities and many others in the disability community, the concern is straightforward: no one should feel that assisted suicide is easier to access than the supports needed to live with dignity.
Canada continues to struggle with persistent gaps in disability supports. Many people with disabilities live in poverty. Accessible, affordable housing remains scarce. Access to mental health care and community supports is lacking across the country.
Against this broken backdrop, expanding assisted death beyond end-of-life situations risks sending a troubling message — that the suffering created by social inequality can be addressed through assisted suicide rather than social reform.
And now Parliament is once again debating whether to expand MAID further to also include mental illness. But what happened to suicide prevention? Are people with disabilities not entitled to the same suicide prevention as everyone else?
The special joint committee on medical assistance in dying, comprised of MPs and senators (including London-area MP Andrew Lawton), has heard testimony from witnesses against the expansion of MAID to those whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness. It heard overwhelming evidence about the multitude of problems with Track 2 MAID. The chairs of psychiatry at Canadian medical schools have urged an indefinite pause. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health told the committee there are no established criteria for determining when a mental illness is irremediable.
Legitimate questions have been raised about whether Canada’s current framework adequately protects people who are living with structural disadvantage.
These questions are now before the courts. A coalition of disability organizations, including Inclusion Canada, has launched a Charter challenge arguing that Track 2 violates equality rights and the right to life guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The case asks whether Canada’s laws are discriminating against people with disabilities by allowing assisted death in circumstances where death is not imminent.
Canadians should agree on one principle: people with disabilities deserve the same commitment to dignity, support and opportunity as anyone else.
Persons with disabilities deserve the same response other Canadians receive when they are suffering: investment in supports, housing, and mental health services, not a faster path to death. Our politicians should be helping people live meaningful lives, not end them.
Krista Carr is chief executive officer of Inclusion Canada. She was a witness before the Parliamentary special joint committee on medical assistance in dying
Yeah, but it will be easier for the muzzies to take over the country if more Canadians kill themselves. Gotta think big picture here.
And our political class and their media laughed at Sarah Palin when she said the single-payer health care would lead to “death panels.”
But just think of all the money they save knocking inconvenient people off!
More for the migrants!
Gov’t “healthcare” = death protocol.
“But I’m not dead yet!” Monty Python turned out to be prophecy, not comedy.
Individuals with disabilities , that would include Liberal Politicians
Whatever sacrifices your betters demand, citizen!
The more I hear about Canada’s MAID law, the more disturbing it sounds. Canada has MAID “advocates” whose job it is to help people utilize the law. In practice, the advocates urge depressed, mentally ill and mentally impaired people to kill themselves, and then tell them how to answer questions or actually change their medical condition to have a better chance at being approved to use MAID. There was an article about how one MAID lawyer told a man who used MAID to kill himself how to cause a deterioration in his medical condition to meet the criteria. The man was depressed and mentally impaired. But the advocate didn’t care. “Advocate” seems to mean advocate for getting people to die, not advocate to determine what is in the patient’s best interests. This article brings up the same points. Advocates push death and don’t offer alternatives.
Who does it better, Canada or the Nazis?
https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/euthanasia.htm
“The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler’s decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationery and back dated to Sept. 1, enlarged “the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.””
If the Canadians implemented MAID for anyone who wants it, can anyone still complain about the death penalty?
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